2020 Overview

This year-end newsletter is an overview of the books, essays, teacher's reference guides, and monthly challenges that I read, wrote, or undertook in 2020. It continues to be tremendous fun to learn in public and I deeply appreciate the community that continues to be built around our shared interest in lifelong learning. 

Books

Below are the books that most influenced me in 2020 - changing or refining how I think and see the world. 13 out of 85 total books read in 2020 (~15%) fell into this category. 

• Alchemy by Rory Sutherland
• General Fox Conner by Steven Rabalais
• The Lucifer Principle by Howard Bloom
• The Wit and Wisdom of Lee Kuan Yew by LKY
• The Life of Elbert Gary by Ida Tarbell
• The HP Way by David Packard
• Chase, Chance, and Creativity by James Austin
• How to Argue and Win Every Time by Gerry Spence
• A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander
• Ackoff's Best by Russell Ackoff
• The Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson
• On Edward Tufte 
• On Dee Hock

Full list of books read in 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014

Any book, which is at all important, should be immediately re-read

Essays

• I published 3 essays in 2020 - My Learning Process, Challenging * Mattering = Meaningful, and Lessons at 30.  

Teacher's Reference Guides

• I compiled 4 teacher's reference guides in 2020 - On Bill Gurley, On Edward Tufte, On Dee Hock, and On Chris Dixon. 4 absolutely amazing thinkers and teachers from who I have learned a lot. Of the 4, Dee Hock should be much better known than he currently is and I hope this reference guide, as well as the 7-part podcast that The Innovation Show put together, helps spread his ideas.
• New for December is a Physics 1-pager - we're in the process of putting together 1-page summaries for the various disciplines within The Latticework. This exercise will help us distill these key ideas as much as we can and compile them into a useful and valuable teacher's reference guide.

Monthly Challenges

• My favorite challenges from 2020 were learning how to skateboard, writing my 3-5 most important things on index cards, and the challenge from December described below... 
• In December, my wife and I did John Gottman's 30 Days to a Better Relationship. We answered one question per night that helped spur reflection, openness, gratitude, dialogue, vulnerability, and more. Really worthwhile and probably worth doing every year (thanks, Wifey, for the idea! <3 )

Other

• Calendar. Not To-Do Lists
• The 4 F's of Game Design by Jason VandenBerghe
• The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake by David Brooks
• So You Want To Learn Physics... by Susan Fowler
• Looking for Syllabus 2.0 by Dani Grant
• The Future of Online Learning by Tiago Forte
• The Friendship That Made Google Huge
• Information Flow by Jesse Schell
• The Mental Model Fallacy by Cedric Chin
• Ron Conway and the Economic Empowerment Award by Brian Chesky
• The Power of 10 Playbook by Daniel Gross

Hope you had a beautiful and recharging end of 2020. 2021 is going to be a banner year!

Amor Fati Amor.

Blas

"The purpose of thinking is to let the ideas die instead of us dying." - Alfred North Whitehead

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